I had almost completed my Developer Survey 2017, when I realized, that I wasn't taking this survey on Stack Overflow, rather I was taking it on SurveyMonkey.
I don't know how I feel about giving them such confidential data about me. On the other hand: I would give this data to Stack Overflow. I assume, that they have policies on not selling my data to big advertisement companies...

"Why do they add the 'This will be kept private' only here?" - because the other information up to that point is not personally identifiable (i.e. you can't be identified just by that information).
– OdedJan 30 '17 at 11:49

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I beg to differ. Infromation about the company I work at, what I do, for how long, my gender? Thats confidential information to me.
– RaisingAgentJan 30 '17 at 11:51

But, from the thousands of people that fill the survey, knowing your gender (and the information about your company) doesn't point to your giving that answer.
– OdedJan 30 '17 at 11:52

2

The first page of the survey says this (amongs others): On that note, throughout the survey, certain answers you and your peers give will be treated as personally identifiable information, and therefore kept out of the anonymized results file. We’ll call each of these out in the survey with a note saying “This information will be kept private.”
– OdedJan 30 '17 at 11:53

Thx, thats what I wanted to know. But why ask questions, that dont show up in any statistic?
– RaisingAgentJan 30 '17 at 11:55

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Because it can be useful to find trends - we can report on those even if we don't share the actual results from every user.
– OdedJan 30 '17 at 11:58

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Makes sense. But I still dont like the thought-terminating cliché 'You are invisible in the masses'. I guess I should just not take the Soufflé then.
– RaisingAgentJan 30 '17 at 12:02

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@Oded Could you post it as an answer? I'm pretty sure SO has thought this through, before deciding to use SurveyMonkey. I think it would be useful to have an official answer on MSO, on how our privacy is protected despite using a third-party platform for the survey.
– S.L. Barth - Reinstate MonicaJan 30 '17 at 12:05

I think your question is - "how is our privacy protected, when SO uses a third party (SurveyMonkey) for the survey?" Maybe that should be the title of the question?
– S.L. Barth - Reinstate MonicaJan 30 '17 at 12:34

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@Oded I would beg to differ. In my company I am the only one that does what I do. If my gender and role is/was public along with my company I would be easily Identifiable.
– NathanOliverJan 30 '17 at 12:58

@NathanOliver - I didn't say the name of the company was to be released - I was talking about information about the company (size, location etc...), which would not identify yourself. I doubt we would release company names.
– OdedJan 30 '17 at 13:33

@Oded OK. As long as the company is not released I do not see how they could find you.
– NathanOliverJan 30 '17 at 13:38

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It's not so much about if you trust company x, but if you trust the IT department of company x. When some site gets hacked, that information can end up public. As we see happening over and over again. This has happened to companies with far more resources than Stack Exchange and Surveymonkey. If you are concerned about privacy, simply don't give such information away.
– LundinJan 30 '17 at 15:02

2 Answers
2

SurveyMonkey's privacy policy guarantees respondents that "your survey responses are owned and managed by the survey creator, and we treat that information as private to the survey creator, except if the survey creator has made the questions and responses available via a public link." (That last option, making response available via a public link hosted by SurveyMonkey, is not something Stack Overflow is doing with this survey -- we will, rather, making some responses to some questions available via a public dataset on our own servers, as we have in the past.)

That's not to say that the data could never, ever be divulged to a third party -- it is, after all, stored on servers connected to the Internet. But what SurveyMonkey's privacy policy means is that deliberate releases of the data will be controlled solely by Stack Overflow.

As for those deliberate releases, as Oded indicated in his answer, the questions marked "this information will be kept private" will be excluded from the public results file, in order to minimize the risk that someone can "triangulate" a given response set to an individual. We will provide high-level, aggregated reporting of how responses break out for certain sub-groups, if those groups are sufficiently large enough that we don't think anyone's responses could be identified.

On that note, throughout the survey, certain answers you and your peers give will be treated as personally identifiable information, and therefore kept out of the anonymized results file. We’ll call each of these out in the survey with a note saying “This information will be kept private.”

Thanks for posting it as an answer! I think the OP's concern is that their data may also end up in the hands of SurveyMonkey. Is there a statement on that?
– S.L. Barth - Reinstate MonicaJan 30 '17 at 12:32

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@S.L.Barth - I am certain it won't end up with SurveyMonkey, but I am not an authority on that - just basing that on what I know on how we do things. I will get someone with more authority on the subject to respond.
– OdedJan 30 '17 at 12:33

Thanks! I have faith that SO thought it through before using SurveyMonkey. I just think it's good if we have an official statement on the issue, here on MSO. I'll be glad to wait until you have time to get an authorative answer.
– S.L. Barth - Reinstate MonicaJan 30 '17 at 12:39

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@S.L.Barth SurveyMonkey is a SAAS platform that we're using -- they do not have access to the data filled out by respondents, only Stack Overflow does. To avoid burying this in comments, I'm posting a separate answer that links to their privacy policies.
– Kevin TroyJan 30 '17 at 18:14